JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY Published Quarterly by the American Society of Mammalogists VOL. 24 NOVEMBER 17, 1943 No. 4 CLINTON HART MERRIAM-1855-1942* BY WILFRED H. OSGOOD C. Hart Merriam was the first president of the American Society of Mammalo- gists. In itself, this might not be significant, but to those familiar with the his- tory of American mammalogy it marks the expression of a rarely equalled pre- eminence of one man in a given field of science. But for him a society of mam- malogists might not have been possible and, although younger men were more active in promoting the organization, no other could have been thought of for the honor of presiding at its opening sessions. His position was unique and everyone recognized it. He was the central figure and the most dynamic in an era of very great activity and progress. To review his life is to recapitulate the events of this era and to indicate their far reaching effects not only in this country but throughout the world. EARLY LIFE He was born December 5, 1855, at Locust Grove, New York, where his parents lived in a rural mansion surrounded by ample acres and shadowed by the Adiron- dack Mountains. In such surroundings many a boy has a passion for the woods and fields even to the extent of beginning seriously to probe their secrets. Some- times it may continue through life, but usually only as a pastime and a refuge from interests that are considered more practical. This boy, however, saw his career in it and from his early teens was engrossed with it. His parents encour- aged rather than hindered it and the way opened up for him in a manner which probably even exceeded his boyhood dreams. That he had such dreams no one can doubt, for to the end of his days he continued to plan large undertakings. His father and mother were of old American stock, Merriam himself directly descended from one of two brothers who came from England to settle in Connec- ticut prior to 1830. Dewitt Clinton, the distinguished governor of New York in the first decades of the nineteenth century, was a family hero and his name was borne through several generations of Merriams. It was subordinated to an ini- tial in our subject mainly to distinguish him, especially in family circles, from * For other biographical sketches of the same subject see Talbot and Talbot, Science, 95, pp. 45-46, 1942; Fisher, Jour. Wash. Acad. Sci., 32, pp. 318-320, 1942. 421 kt . wo lTY3? 40-L- 422 JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY his father Clinton L. Merriam. The name Hart was from his mother who was born Caroline Hart. His father was something more than a country gentleman -a man of ability and energy, a leader in his community, and for some time member for his district in the Federal House of Representatives. He had more than ordinary interest in natural history and it is recorded that he was in corre- spondence with John Muir as early as 1871, the subject being glaciation in Yo- semite Valley. Hart had one older brother, Charles Collins Merriam, who was for a time associated with his father in Washington while he was a Member of Congress. Later he led an active life managing a large farm near Lyons Falls, Lewis Co., New York, and carrying on extensive lumber interests in the Adirondacks. Hart's sister, somewhat younger than himself, now best known as Florence Merriam Bailey, shared her brother's love of nature and never was far from him although following an independent career in which she became a charming writer and a distinguished observer of American birds. When only fifteen years of age, young Merriam had already begun the forma- tion of a private collection of bird skins and had gone through the patience-trying struggles involved in learning to prepare such specimens. In fact his father had provided him with a single-barreled shotgun when he was only thirteen or four- teen and, later, had taken him to a taxidermist (John Wallace) in New York City for instruction in the mysteries of skinning and mounting birds. This was at the instance of Prof. Baird to whom his father had taken the boy in Washington in 1877. With this foundation and burning with youthful ambition, at the age of seventeen he was attached to a government expedition, the Hayden Survey, through his father's influence, plus that of Prof. Baird, and went west to spend a summer collecting birds and eggs in the Yellowstone region. On this trip he collected 313 bird skins and 67 nests and eggs. Methods of mammal collecting were then unknown to him and apparently he confined his efforts mainly to birds. His report of some fifty pages which appeared in 1873 in the Sixth Annual Report of the U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories is his first contribution to zoologi- cal literature, a slightly annotated and largely tabular record of specimens col- lected. Significant is his acknowledgment of aid received from S. F. Baird and Robert Ridgway, indicating that he was already in touch with leaders in the subject that had fascinated him. Other young men on the survey included John M. Coulter, botanist, Henry Gannett, geologist and astronomer, and W. H. Holmes, artist, all of whom later attained national prominence and became his lifelong friends. At this time, also, he met others, including Henry W. Henshaw whose reminiscences, published in the Condor (vol. XXII, p. 4, 1919), refer to him as follows: "It was in 1872 that I first met Dr. Merriam, then a boy of six- teen, just back from his first trip to the Yellowstone region with the Hayden Survey. He had much to tell of the wonders of the region, which then had been seen only by a favored few, and where he had made a valuable collection of birds, which we examined together with mutual interest." In later life, Merriam frequently referred to this trip and there can be little doubt it was a powerful influence in shaping his career. It gave him a taste of OSGOOD-CLINTON HART MERRIAM 423 the great West which he subsequently quartered so thoroughly and it connected him directly with the era of its geographic exploration which was just closing. The Pacific Railroad surveys were not very far back, the men who participated in them were still living, and the spirit of discovery was still rife. Baird, espe- cially, as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, had shown the possibilities of promoting zoological knowledge through the cooperation of governmental agen- cies and it is not unlikely that Baird, directly or indirectly, planted the seed in Merriam's mind that later bore so much fruit. At seventeen years of age, however, a young man of good family could not be allowed to follow a supposed hobby exclusively. After a preparation at the Pingry Military School in Elizabeth, New Jersey, he was sent in 1874 to Yale, where he spent four years in the Sheffield Scientific School with medicine per- force as an objective, but with his interest in natural history getting stimulation and encouragement from such men in the faculty as A. Hyatt Verrill, Sidney I. Smith and Daniel Cady Eaton. Among his classmates was the biologist E. B. Wilson. While in New Haven, his interest in birds never flagged and before he left there or shortly after, in 1877, he published an account of "The Birds of Connecticut." Thence he went to Columbia to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, receiving his M.D. in 1879, at the age of twenty-four. During these student days he made lifetime friendships and continued to expand his connec- tions with young naturalists of the period. In 1874, as indicated by a brief pub- lished paper "Notes from the South," he had an outing in Florida and in 1875 he was temporarily employed by the U. S. Fish Commission. Results of his obser- vations of birds in the vicinity of his home were published in 1878 and 1879 under the title "Some Birds of Lewis County, New York." On March 7, 1878, while still a medical student in New York, he assisted in organizing the Linnaean Soci- ety of New York and was elected its first president. At this time, ornithology was receiving much attention in various quarters and especially in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a coterie of young men were actively engaged in forming private collections of bird skins. These included William Brewster, Henry Henshaw, Ruthven Deane, and Charles Batchelder. This group in 1871 organized the Nuttall Ornithological Club and Merriam was one of the early contributors to its "Bulletin" which began in 1876. From 1879 to 1885 he followed the practice of medicine in Locust Grove, ap- parently with marked success, but the record shows that during this time he was also very active in studying the local fauna, in building up his collections, in correspondence and personal contact with others of similar taste, and in develop- ing a growing interest in mammals as well as birds. In the spring of 1883 he went to Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence as surgeon of the S.S. Proteus engaged in a sealing expedition which gave him the opportunity to ob- serve the great migration of seals and to collect many specimens. The series of skulls obtained on this trip, especially of the hooded seal, is still the finest in existence. In 1881 he published a "Preliminary List of the Birds of the Adirondacks" but, thereafter, although active in promoting ornithological work, his personal effort 424 JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY was devoted almost entirely to mammals.